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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Update

I hope you all had a good Easter/Passover. In the great Aussie tradition, we had a four day weekend- Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. People at work even lamented that they don't get Easter Tuesday off anymore. I just laughed and told them to be happy to get any days off. It was great to have the long weekend to relax. I was a good Catholic and went to mass on Easter Sunday. I was shocked at the lack of effort in the dressing appropriately department for a large part of the congregation. Why on Earth would you wear shorts and flip flops to church, let alone on Easter? The other big thing in Australia over Easter is this weird obsession with the national Easter road toll. Victoria lead the way this year with nine deaths, which we're supposed to feel ashamed about (I wasn't out there speeding). For Tuesday night trivia we named our team "Easter Road Toll Shame." Unfortunately we lost by two points.

Work is getting interesting. The Department of Education is currently undergoing a restructure, which will go into effect at the start of May. No one is losing their jobs- it's a realignment of people to meet the newly elected government's priorities. They have renamed the four offices and each one has a different focus area. Most divisions and branches are moving as whole chunks, but our branch will be split up between two offices. My boss is becoming the general manager of student learning programs, which means I will now be higher up in administrative responsibilities for her (more involvement with the ministers' office and briefings). It should be a good shake up and ultimately I hope it means that some senior policy/project officer positions will open up so that I can advance in the Department. I want to get involved with the policy research side of things, which will be in a different office to the one we are moving to.

The Australian Rules Football season has begun, and Essendon are doing much better than last year. We won our first two matches against Adelaide and Fremantle. However, yesterday's game killed me because despite having a 48 point lead over Carlton in the second quarter, we lost by 3 points! So utterly depressing and it should never have happened.